At their annual Consumer Electronics Show extravaganza, device manufacturers like to dazzle the crowd with cutting-edge prototypes -- but many of those "coming soon" gizmos never make it to market.

Skiff Reader

1 of 7

The Skiff Reader was meant to be the savior of newspapers and magazines. Prototypes of the bendable e-reader, flaunted at CES 2010, were impressive. Newspaper and magazine articles would appear on the 11.5-inch touchscreen as they did in print, with high-resolution photos, graphics and other design elements intact. The hardware was a thin sheet of stainless steel foil, so flexible that it could be bent nearly in half.

Skiff promised to launch a digital store later in the year, but it never got the chance. Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. bought out the company in June 2010 for its publishing platform. It had no interest in the hardware, which it killed.